Abstract

A rapid penetration of multimedia into our daily lives triggered unparallel demand for high data rates Internet access by businesses, institutions, and by individual household users. To fulfil these demands will require low cost, high speed, high granularity access networks which can not be built using merely current technology and approaches to the data and signal processing. In this paper, we will review some advanced previously demonstrated all-optical techniques which may help to address the electronic bottleneck which is the major limiting factor in communication networks today.